How to Make a Broken Dish Pendant

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Pro tip: If you pretend that your dinnerware aesthetic is mismatched Fiestaware, then it doesn't matter how many dishes your kids break, because you can always just go buy another random plate and it'll fit right in. And bonus points for style, because broken Fiestaware is awesome for crafting!

Of course, you can use all kinds of broken dishes for crafting, but I am particularly fond of this colorful and cute broken dish pendant that I recently made from my dearly departed yellow Fiestaware plate. It's easier than you think to cut ceramics with a couple of standard tools, and there are loads of ways to finish off the pendant to your taste. This broken dish pendant is a fun upcycling project, and you get to use power tools--what could be better?

Tools & Supplies

To make your own broken dish pendant you will need:

Broken Dish

The local thrift store is my favorite place to buy crafting supplies, and I have no qualms about shattering even the cutest thrifted plate just to make mosaic tesserae or broken dish pendants. I'm equally fond of upcycling my own broken possessions, which is why I have that sad little stack of broken Fiestaware!

Dremel with Diamond Bit Cutting Wheel

 

Obviously, you can substitute whatever variable-speed rotary tool you prefer, but my good old Dremel 3000 has been doing right by me for at least a decade now, so I don't have experience with any other brands.

Grinder or Sandpaper (optional)

You do want to grind or sand away any sharp edges or snags, but you can leave the just plain irregular or uneven bits alone if you're not feeling picky.

Jewelry Findings

There's a lot of scope for imagination here! You'll see me finishing my pendant with soldered edges and a double barrel swivel, but you can use any findings and method you prefer, or even just use a tile bit to drill a hole right through your piece for hanging.

1. Cut the pendant shape from your dish

The secret to this project is just how stinking easy it is to cut ceramics with the correct tools. Here, I'm using an old-school Dremel 3000 and a diamond cutting wheel. That's really all you need!  Notice that I'm doing this cutting in my sink, shamefully getting water droplets all over my Dremel. That's because the most important piece to this puzzle is keeping your work surface wet: it reduces friction and lowers the temperature (caused by friction), so your piece is less likely to crack and your cutting wheel will last longer.

2. Sand or Grind the Edges of Your Pendant (optional)

I definitely could have cut this circle more neatly (if you're worried about making wonky cuts, choose a super simple shape, like a triangle, for your first few pendants. Save the wonky-looking circles for experts like me!), but the soldered edges that I'm planning on will cover a lot of flaws. All I did, then, was switch out my Dremel's cutting wheel for a grinding bit to grind down one jagged bit and round the pendant's edges. Rounding the edges ALWAYS makes a cut piece look more professional!

3. Rig the Pendant for Hanging

You have SO many options for actually turning your broken dish into a pendant!

• Use epoxy glue to adhere a bail directly to the back of the pendant.
• Use a diamond drill bit to drill a hole through the top of the pendant.
• Wrap the pendant in wire, and twist to make a loop for hanging.
• Solder around the pendant, then solder on a jump ring.

For a piece any bigger than this particular pendant, I like the look of drilling a hole directly through the dish, but this little Fiestaware logo pendant is only 1" in diameter! Did any of y'all also learn how to solder during the soldered microscope slide jewelry craze? If so, you'll know that I burnished copper foil tape onto the pendant's edges, brushed them with flux, then soldered them with lead-free silver solder. A larger dollop of solder on top allows you to fix the hanger. 

 There are SO MANY fun things to do with broken dish pendants like these. You can turn them into necklaces or charm bracelets, add them to suncatchers or windchimes, or embellish pull chains or garlands. Supersize your broken dish pendants and use them as Christmas ornaments or gift tags, or decoupage or paint on top of them to make signage or wall art. Let me know what you're going to turn YOUR broken dish pendant into in the comments below!

4 Ways to Cut Glass Bottles (including the One Way that Actually Works!)

I originally published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

The ability to cut a glass bottle all by yourself is the Camelot of crafting. We've all heard of people doing it, we've seen the YouTube tutorials, we've for sure seen the awesome stuff you can make from a cut glass bottle, and yet... if you've ever tried it for yourself, you know that it's not that simple, is it?

If you haven't cut a glass bottle before and you think that it IS simple, go try it. I'll wait here until you come back pissed off and scratched, having cleaned up the mound of shattered glass that you were left with.

Done? Okay, great! Now hang out with me here while I run through the three most popular methods of cutting glass bottles that seem to show up most often online, and I'll tell you why they suck. Your reward is that when I'm done, I'm going to walk you through the one way of cutting glass bottles that actually works like a charm. It takes some special tools, but it's easy and it WORKS.

But first, the three methods that don't work:

Method #1: Score and Tap

It's a bummer that this method is so unreliable because it's the one that's the most commercially available. Most store-bought bottle cutting kits include a jig for the bottle, a wheel that etches the bottle, and a tool for tapping it:

 Here's the bottle cutting kit that I owned for a decade before it finally pissed me off enough that I gave it away.

The idea is that you place the bottle on the jig, turn it so that it's etched by the wheel, and then tap it to break the glass neatly at the etching. Here's an example of what a typical bottle cutter kit looks like:

It... kind of works? Ish? The method is sound, but the problems are that one, it's got a big learning curve, so your first 20-50 bottles aren't going to come out right. Two, it's unreliable, so even after you've finally got the hang of the method, you're still going to crack a bunch of bottles. There's just no getting around it. And that's a lot of waste for a process that's supposedly all about removing glass from the waste stream.

Method #2: Hot and Cold Water

This method is similar to the process above, except that instead of tapping the scoreline, you alternate pouring hot and cold water on it, using the physics of temperature to neatly break the bottle:

That's the idea, at least, but again, a method that involves breaking the bottle, however carefully engineered, is still going to subject you to a lot of trial and error. It's a more elegant solution in that you don't have to physically smack your bottle with a hammer, but you're still going to get so many bottles with wayward cracks, no matter how much you practice. It's not worth the waste.

Method #3: String and Fire

Oh my gosh, I so badly wish that this method worked better because you KNOW how much I love myself a good fire! For this method, you only slightly endanger your life by soaking a string in a flammable substance, wrapping it around a bottle, and then SETTING THAT STRING ON FIRE:

YAAAAAASSSSS!!!!! Who does not love setting stuff on fire?! Unfortunately, not only is this method exactly as unreliable as the first two but it also, you know, physically endangers you. Sigh...

Method #4: Just Cut It, Bro (the one that works!)

Okay, Sugar, you've been so patient with me first telling you all the ways that don't work for cutting a glass bottle that now I'm going to give you a present by telling you the way that DOES work.

You might have noticed that the three unreliable methods that I've shown you all have something in common: they break the bottle. Sure, you can get the hang of it and break the bottle just right more often than not, but there's still too much luck involved for my taste. In my opinion, the best method for cutting a glass bottle is to do just that: get yourself a rotary tool with a glass-cutting bit, and cut that bottle!

I use an older Dremel 4000 with a diamond cutting wheel attached. That, plus a trickle of water, plus some safety gear, plus a few grits of sandpaper, is all you need to cut a bottle accurately every time, no luck needed, with a very short learning curve.

Directions

1. Mark your cutting line.

Do this with a Sharpie, not masking tape or anything water soluble. You can mark curves, but keep in mind the turning radius of your cutting wheel--it's not a jigsaw.

2. Put on your safety gear.

You absolutely need a breathing mask to do this method. No excuses. I am not responsible for you filling your lungs with glass dust, so don't even think about not doing what I say. I use this type of mask, which is also good for soapmaking. The bottle will get slippery when it's wet, so a rubber glove on your bottle-holding hand won't steer you wrong, either.

 Me + weapon + victim: let the games begin!

3. Start the water flowing.

Run your faucet or hose so that lukewarm water will trickle over your bottle, right at the spot where you're cutting. Keep that water at your cutting location the whole time you're cutting. If your aim is off, you WILL crack that bottle, so don't let your mind wander.

4. Cut slowly, all the way around.

Hold the bottle steady in your non-dominant hand, and the Dremel steady in your dominant hand. Keep the Dremel itself out of the water, but make sure that water is flowing over your cutting location, and then just let the cutting wheel do all the work. Be especially careful when you're almost all the way around, as that last half-inch or so is the most likely to chip.

5. Sand the edges.

You can grind down sharp edges using a grinding bit on your Dremel, but I actually love the way that this guy sands down his glass by hand, and so I do mine the exact same way:

The only difference is I stop after the 320 grit because I just need to not cut my face off via my new drinking glass, not have the shiniest rims on the block:

My favorite thing about this method is how consistent it is. Whether you've got a bumpy, embossed glass, or a thin-walled beer bottle, or a wine bottle made of HUGELY thick glass, you'll cut it pretty much perfectly, pretty much your first time trying. It's way better than breaking your bottle and hoping for the best.

History of Fashion Study: How to Drill a Hole in a Shell

Syd and I started a History of Fashion study this summer, using this book as our spine:



It's a very leisurely study, with lots of handicrafts, so we've actually spent most of the summer on the first unit, Prehistoric Fashion. We studied how animal skins are prepared, how the first sewing needles were invented, we worked with leather, we learned about the invention of weaving, we did some weaving, we learned about the first types of jewelry, and we crafted with shells.

I'll give you the full run-down of this unit later, because it's been awesome, but first: if you want to craft with shells, you probably at some point need to know how to drill a hole in a shell. I'm here to help you with that!




As you can see in the image above, you only need two things: a drill and a suitable drill bit. You can go old-school prehistoric and use a hand drill, or you can use what I use, which is a Dremel. It's so high-speed that it drills through pretty much anything as if that thing is butter.

If you use a Dremel, you also have a lot of choice in what bit you use. I used an engraving bit because that's what I had on hand and I was too lazy to go to the store, but I regret that a little now, because the bit was a bit too soft and I managed to wear it down in the course of drilling through just a few shells. I'd have done better to put the shells in a very shallow pan of water so that I could drill them wet, but it would have been best if I'd used an actual drill bit, such as a narrow tungsten carbide bit or even a diamond bit.

Ah, well... Next time!

Regardless, didn't these shells come out perfectly?



I'll show you another time how Syd and I painted and glittered them, and all the random stuff that we did with them, but right now Will is taking a practice SAT exam at the table near the computer, and I can't wander off with my camera and photograph shells because I have to supervise her and remind her every ten minutes that she can't actually make snarky comments about the questions out loud during the actual SAT...

Homeschooled kids. I tell you what.

P.S. Now that I'm no longer the editor of Crafting a Green World, I spend all my social media time on this blog's Facebook page. I share interesting links to homeschool resources and craft tutorials, and I take weird photos of my WIPs and our homeschool day and put them there. Come see me!

Tutorial: A Kid-Friendly Aluminum Pour

You can do anything with a Dremel.

At Maker Faire Detroit, I hadn't thought to bring my power tool collection with me (silly me!), and so the girls and I scratched out our scratch block for the iron pour with some random hand tools--a butter knife, a quarter, a spoon handle. We love our finished piece, but that was hard, tedious work for a couple of little kids, and I didn't come away from the process feeling like carving a scratch block was a very kid-friendly enterprise.

When our local hands-on science center teamed up with our local hands-on metal sculpture studio to do an aluminum pour, the scratch blocks were available to purchase from the museum several weeks in advance. I bought one each for my girls, took them home, unpackaged them, tossed the huge nails that came with them as a suggested carving tool straight into my Odds and Ends for Crafting bin, and instead brought out my Dremel and its grinding stone bit.

You might think that power tools are too dangerous for little kids to use, but really they give any kid with decent motor skills and a good pair of safety goggles safe and easy access to a wide variety of projects that are too hard, too dangerous, or simply too tedious to perform by hand. Kids like drilling holes, kids like cutting, kids like carving, and kids have big ideas. Heck, that's why power tools were invented!

Nevertheless, I get ahead of myself. At this point, all we have is a scratch block in front of us. Measure your scratch block--


--then draw out several mock-ups on newsprint so that the kiddos can practice their design:


There are two things to remember about a scratch block design:

1. The image will be reversed. This is only a big deal if you're writing words; I had the girls dictate to me the words that they wanted to write onto their scratch blocks as I typed them into our handwriting software program, then I printed them out mirror-image for them to copy.
2. What you carve in will stick up in the final block. You can do some really cool things to play around with depth in your scratch block, although this time everyone stuck to simple single-depth line art, which is fine--playing with a process takes time!

Each girl used a black Sharpie to copy her final design directly onto her scratch block--

(tangent: I love the look of peace on her sweet little face as she works. She is truly a child who thrives learning at home.)

--and then, because hallelujah it was an unseasonably warm day in mid-winter, we took the scratch blocks and the Dremel outside and didn't get dust all over the living room!

Here's what they look like when they're sketched on but not yet carved:

When using power tools, a good, clear pair of safety goggles is the height of fashion:

Using the Dremel with grinding stone attachment as a stylus, set to just perhaps a 1 or 2 speed setting, all you have to do is trace the Sharpie lines:

Have I mentioned how great it is to have a little girl with dirty hands?

Especially when she loves power tools with the same goofy love that I do?

Syd did not feel safe using the Dremel, but she's a brave kid, and so when I assured her that she was safe, and explained that I would not carve her scratch block for her, she gamely gave it a go:

And here's what a scratch block looks like after it's been carved!

Matt is REALLY hard to buy presents for (he doesn't like anything as much as he likes not spending the money for it), but he is an artist, and so a scratch block of his own to carve was my Christmas present to him:

And what did he give me for Christmas, you ask? Oh, just this brand-new laptop! Ahem...

(Hint: I'm REALLY easy to buy presents for...)

After a few days of admiring our scratch blocks, and of studying aluminum as our schoolwork, we all trooped over to the Wonderlab one Friday night to watch the metalworkers pour molten aluminum into our very own scratch blocks:

It's always the process, not the product, for us--having fun bowling is more important than your lousy score at the end of the game, goofing around in shaving cream is just as fine as doing your math right then, etc.--but I have to say that in this case, both the process and the product?

We LOVE them!!!

The Day Camp and the Dremel

The monkeys have been spending their mornings at a little daycamp over at the YMCA this week--a whole morning in the woods with a few very little kids, poking around and singing songs. It's especially fun because it's run by local singer-songwriter Miss Bobbie--Willow told me, "Miss Bobbie plays GUITAR while she sings with us. Have you ever thought about doing that?"

It's awesome and exhausting, just what a daycamp should be. Last night at dinner Willow actually crawled underneath the table and then fell asleep:
That's the picture of a kid who had fun at her morning day camp.

While the girlies have been frolicking away from me, I've been indulging in creating some things with pretty much the only tool that I can't use around them: the Dremel.

Ooh, the Dremel. If you don't have yourself a hand-held multi-purpose rotary tool, I highly recommend getting one. You can drill with this baby, through plastic and entire books. You can cut with it, through wood or glass or tile. You can grind solder or cut glass or ceramics with it.

You really want to do all those things, right? I know!

Anyway, I've been trying to think up some other things to do with my vinyl record stash (Stash-busting is always an approved activity, but I'm also hoping to have an exceptionally successful day at the farmer's market craft fair this Saturday--gotta pay for day camp, don't you know). Two guesses to figure out why I would do this to a vinyl record album:
Clue: I've also checked out several knot-tying books from the library.